We came off a spiritual high from seeing hundreds of people come to Christ in Zimbabwe. As a squad we saw over 1,000 people come to know the Lord, which is the most our mentor has ever seen in a single month on the Race in her career with Adventures in Missions.
When we got to Haiti, the spiritual warfare was real. A cloud of apathy was so thick that we were practically coughing from the smoke of indifference lingering in the air. It was hard to get out of bed in the morning and to be enthusiastic about ministry.
Yet we have this amazing opportunity to serve at a children’s home, which is a ministry that we have been praying for literally the entire Race.
Then why were we so apathetic?
The enemy tried to lie to us, making us feel like we weren’t wanted or needed. It was a struggle for most of us to find joy in the work. We are living on a compound, which can leave me feeling like a chicken that never gets out of its coup. It was a lot of prayer to uplift the spiritual warfare, but about a week and a half in I began to notice a significant different.
Now we are all totally in love with our ministry here. Grace So Amazing is a children’s home that takes in kids whose parents do not have the ability to provide the essential needs like food, water and shelter, or they don’t have parents but their living relatives are in the same situation. Some kids come in as infants with medical conditions like HIV. These kids range from a couple months old to young teenagers.
I get to go to the school that’s out in the village. A good majority of the kids that live at the children’s home go to this school. The American that started the children’s home also started the school. It’s a Christian school for kindergarten through second grade. There is not much to the school in its primitive and basic state. There are a couple cinderblock rooms that have a tin roof covering. The classroom size is honestly smaller than the size of my bedroom at home. One thing I learned about the school system in Haiti is that it is very rare for a kid to start school at the proper age and stay in school consistently through high school. Because of that we have 12 and 14 year old second graders that learn alongside 8 year olds. Sadly, this is completely normal nation wide.
Ultimately we were able to love on the kids and lighten the load of the teachers by taking over class periods and prepping all the homework and filing that happens on the administrative side. We got to take over their PE classes and play all sorts of games with them. Going to the school and being a part of their learning experience has been such a joy and privilege.
The school is in a village that is not too far from the children’s home. As we walked through the village to drop some of the kids off at home after school, I’ve come to find that they live in cylinder block shacks that are smaller than the size of my room. Entire families live in these huts and one of their biggest concerns in leaks coming from the roof. When it rains it pours here in Haiti. We also deliver nutritional rice bags to these homes to help feed them. So many babies are mal nourished here. But regardless they are all smiles and truly don’t know any different.
As we walked by a house I noticed a dead bird tied to a flag post. Apparently it’s one of the many voodoo rituals that they do alongside Christianity. It’s a huge misconception here that you can have Jesus and worship the voodoo spirits as well. The director said how sometimes when she drops kids off she’d walk into the family doing a voodoo ceremony. It breaks my heart to know that the kids grow up thinking that this is okay. But they teach in school that there is no need to worship any spirits and that you only need Jesus.
It is going to be a hard goodbye here in Haiti. We have a little less than a week left and it’s honestly going to be one of the hardest months of saying goodbye on the Race. These kids have a special place in my heart. We all went from apathy to absolute joy in our ministry here and I am beyond thankful for that.
My time here in Haiti has been full of ups and downs. However, there is so much beauty in the pain that I see all around me. The Lord truly does bring beauty from ashes. These kids are a prime example of that. Maybe one day I’ll be able to come back and see how far these kids have come and all that they have overcome.
